Category: Raising Children

WILL YOU STILL GO TO HEAVEN IF YOU DON’T DRINK THE KOOL AID? by Art Smukler, author and psychiatrist

by artsmuklermd, posted in Psychiatry, Raising Children, Self Examination, World events, a psychological view, Writing

A patient reminded me about the November 1978 Jonestown massacre. 913 members of The People’s Temple cult committed suicide by drinking grape-flavored Kool Aid laced with potassium cyanide. Their leader, Jim Jones, after a number of practice sessions, ordered the entire cult to drink the deadly mixture. They did exactly what he said!

Psychotic, crazy, mass hypnosis, gullibility? Probably all.

Is it that much different now, 34 years later?

Charismatic preachers, acting like messengers from some crazy god, continue to have enormous religious and political power. In their eyes, birth control and homosexuality are clearly a sin. Now the preaching has taken on an even crazier tempo. Republicans are battling each other to prove who is the “true” conservative.

As a psychiatrist, I often wonder what is really going on. Am I the crazy one? If I don’t believe, will I not get into “The Kingdom”, or wherever religious fanatics go who are true believers? Whatever their fantasy might be, I’m not interested in joining them.

When a patient is overtly psychotic, logic doesn’t help. Talking to rigid evangelicals also won’t help. So what will?

Join groups like Planned Parenthood, work to have all 50 states pass equality laws supporting gay rights, speak out against any school that won’t teach evolution, speak out against any use of violence to advocate a religious belief, and do whatever you can to expose any hint of terrorism that will limit our right to have the freedom to come to our own conclusions about the world.

Because so many people need to drink Kool Aid, doesn’t mean that we have to respect or ignore the dangers that it breeds.

Any thoughts?

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CHILDHOOD TRAUMA – DOES IT EVER END? by Art Smukler, author & psychiatrist

by artsmuklermd, posted in Childhood Trauma, Psychiatry, Raising Children, Self Examination

Childhood trauma is rampant. 5% of all American children are hospitalized for acute or chronic illness, injuries or disability. This doesn’t include all the millions of children who suffer trauma secondary to poor parenting.

Adults who seek psychiatric help have conduits to their past that are often hidden from their conscious minds. Whether they were ill, injured, abused, abandoned, ignored, devalued or suffered from a major psychiatric illness like Schizophrenia or Bipolar Disorder, they suffered when they were kids and they’re suffering now as adults.

According to statistics from the CDC (Center for Disease Control), victims of childhood trauma live 19 years less than non-victims. That’s an astounding number! If you think about the increase in alcohol abuse, drug abuse, poor decision making and years of chronic stress, it makes sense.

Medication alone can help decrease symptoms, but it certainly doesn’t deal with the hurt, low self-esteem and agony that adults carry forward from their past. To not deal with the bottled-up stress can lead to an autoimmune system that has been overwhelmed for years and at some point can no longer protect against illness and cancer.

Our lives are a continuum and we need to be in touch with how that continuum affects us now. If we don’t deal with our past in a timely fashion, our bodies may deal with us in a very unkindly manner.

For those of you who experienced childhood trauma, I’d be interested in how you dealt with it. What helped? What didn’t? What was it like being alone and misunderstood? Any experiences with childhood hospitalizations? Any ideas from professionals?

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